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THE CONQUEST OF A CONTINENT OR THE EXPANSION OF RACES IN AMERICA BY MADISON GRANT PRESIDENT, NEWYORKZOOLOGICALSOCIETY TRUSTEE,AMERICANMUSEUMOF NATURALHISTORY PRESIDENT, BOONEANDCROCKETTCLUB COUNCILLOR,AMERICANGEOGRAPHICALSOCIETY AUTHOR,"PASSINGOFTHEGREATRACB" WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY PROF. HENRY FAIRFIELD OSBORN CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS NEW YORK LONDON • MCMXXXIII Copyright,1933,by CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS PrintedintheUnitedStatesofAmerica All rights reserved. No part ofthis book may be reproduced in any form without the permission ofCharles Scribner's Sons A To MY BROTHER DE FOREST GRANT Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2011 with funding from LYRASIS Members and Sloan Foundation http://www.archive.org/details/conquestofcontinOOgran INTRODUCTION The character of a country depends upon the racial character of the men and women who dominate it. I welcome this volume as the first attempt to give an authentic racial history of our country, based on the scientific interpretation of race as distinguished from language and from geographic distribution. Themoststrikinginduction arisingthroughresearch into the prehistory of man is that racial characters and predispositions, governing racial reactions to certain old and new conditions of life, extend far back of the most' ancient civilizations. For example, the characteristics which Homer, in the Iliad and the Odyssey, attributed to his heroes and to his imaginary gods and goddesses were not the product of the civilization which existed in his time in Greece; they were the product of creative evolution long prior even to the beginnings of Greek culture and government. This — creativeprinciple themostmysteriousoftherecently discovered phenomena of evolution, to which I have — devoted the researches of nearly half a century is that racialpreparation forvarious expressions of civili- — — zation art, law, government, etc. islong antecedent to these institutions, Ripley missed this point in his superb researches into the racial constitution of the peoples of Europe. Grant partly based his Passing of the Great Race on Ripley's researches, but did not carry out the purely INTRODUCTION viii anatomical analysis to its logical end-point, namely, that moral, intellectual, and spiritual traits are just as distinctive and characteristic of different races as are head-form, hair and eye color, physical stature, and other data of anthropologists. In the present volume, which I regard as an entirely original and essential contribution to the history of the United States of America, Grant goes much fur- ther and in tracing back the racial origins of the ma- jority of our people he lays the foundation for an un- derstanding of the peculiar characteristics ofAmerican civilization, which, all agree, is of a very new type, something the world has never before seen. Grant supports Ripley in his distinction between — three great European stocks Nordic, Alpine, Medi- terranean. He gives very strong additional reasons for one of his own earlier inductions, namely, that the Aryan language was invented by primitive peoples of the Nordic race before its dispersal, in the third mil- lennium B.C., from the Steppe countryin the southeast of Russia. This superb and flexible language doubt- less aided the Nordic race in its conquest of Europe, in its ever-westward journey across the Atlantic, in its Anglo-Saxon occupation of our continent, in its stamping of Anglo-Saxon institutions on American government and civilization. We all recognize that, like all other languages, Aryan is purely a linguistic and not a racial term, just as French is spoken equally by the Norman Nordics of the north of France, by the Alpines of the center, and by the Mediterraneans of the south. INTRODUCTION ix My faith is unshaken in the ultimately beneficial recognition of racial values and in the stimulating and generous emulation aroused by racial consciousness. Let this stimulation be without prejudice to other — racial values which should be duly recognized and — evaluated values we Anglo-Saxons do not naturally possess. Moreover, I set great store by the great mass of documentary evidence assembled by Grant in the present volume. I think it explodes the bubble, of the opponents of racial values, that they are merely myths. The theme of thepresentwork is that America was made by Protestants of Nordic origin and that their ideas about what makes true greatness should be perpetuated. That this is a precious heritage which we should not impair or dilute by permitting the en- trance and dominance of alien values and peoples of alien minds and hearts. Finally I would like to define clearly my own posi- tion on these very important racial questions which arouse so much heat, so much bad feeling, so much misrepresentation. I object strongly to the assumption that one race is "superior" or "inferior" to another, just as I object to the assumption that all races are alike or even equal. Such assumptions are wholly unwarranted by facts. Equality or inequality, superiority and inferiority, are all relative terms. For example, around the Equator the black races and certain of the colored and tinted races are "superior" to the white races and may be capable under certain conditions of creating great civilizations. In a torrid climate and under a burning sun witness the marvel- x INTRODUCTION lous achievements ofthe Mediterranean race in Meso- potamia, Egypt, North Africa, Cambodia, and India between 4000 B.C. and 1250 a.d. Or, coming nearer home to the cool mountain regions, witness the great achievements of the Alpine race in engineering, in mathematics, and in astronomy. It follows that racial superiority and inferiority are partly matters of the intellectual and spiritual evolution which guides one race after another into periods of great ascent too often followed by sad and cata- strophic decline. In this as in all other interminglings of science and sentiment, let us not extenuate nor write in malice, but always in broad-mindedness and a truly generous spirit. It is with the greatest pleasure that I have written a few words endorsing this book as the first racial history of America, or, in fact, of any nation. I stand with the author not only in nailing his colors to the mast but in giving an entirely indisputable historic, patriotic, and governmental basis to the fact that in its origin and evolution our country is fundamentally rdlc* Henry Fairfield Osborn. August, 1933. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS First and foremost, the author desires to express his appreciation of the assistance of his research as- sociate, Doctor Paul Popenoe, who collected authori- ties and statistics during an intensive study lasting over four years. He also desires to express his appreciation for the sympathy and aid of Professor Henry Fairfield Os- born, and of Charles Stewart Davison, Esq. The latter carefully revised the text and made many val- uable suggestions. The author owes a special debt of gratitude to Doctor Clarence G. Campbell for much assistance and to Doctor Harry H. Laughlin for many of the statistics and analyses used in this book. His thanks are due also to Captain John B. Trevor, whose mas- terly study of the early population has been a great help, as have the studies of Messrs. Howard F. Bar- ker and Marcus L. Hansen. He also wishes to ac- knowledge the assistance of Mr. A. E. Hamilton. Colonel William Wood, of Quebec, has been of great assistance in the data given regarding the origin of the French "Habitants" in Canada. The writer is also obligated to Professor E. Pro- kosch, of Yale University, for his assistance on sev- eral critical points.